Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is colorful but dead inside, just like its enemies (review)

Like this zombie clown, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z taunts you with its colorful, ultimately hollow exterior. (Provided by One PR Studio)

Say what you want about the cartoonish world of cel-shaded video games — that they diminish the mood of a serious narrative, that they’ve become a tired trope in sci-fi and fantasy titles — but at least acknowledge they’ve come a long way.

From Okami and the Legend of Zelda’s Wind Walker to Catherine and the Borderlands series, the evolving visual sophistication of cel-shaded games has resulted in a living-comic-book feel that can brilliantly accentuate both action and strategy.

At least when used correctly. The sharp, gorgeously cel-shaded visuals of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z are a waste of talent next to the hollow writing, button-mashing gameplay and narrow level design. They’re the best part of what could have been a groundbreaking third-person fighting game, but they fall prey to the same lack of focus that plagues the rest of the experience.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is a Ninja Gaiden product in name only. It has little to do with previous Ninja Gaiden installments, unless you consider all ninja-based games to be somehow related. You play as Yaiba, a hard-boiled cyborg zombie hunter who effectively distills every male gaming protagonist cliché into one boring (if profane) chunk of violent masculinity.

The plot consists of main character Yaiba trying to exact revenge on Gaiden series regular Ryu Hayabusa after a fight that leaves Yaiba bleeding and dishonored. Following a cybernetic upgrade, Yaiba speeds through a number of dynamic-looking, beautifully animated environments as he learns new hack-and-slash moves, discovers new weapons, levels up and grows ever-closer to his precious revenge on Ryu.

The third-person camera swings wildly around these closed, largely circular environments as Yaiba dashes along and fights dozens of enemies at a time. It creates a feeling of disorientation but also claustrophobia. Rich vistas with outrageous neon color palettes amount to little more than background distractions. What little platforming Yaiba does remains stuck on rails, more about memorizing button combinations than using your eyes or brain to navigate the environment.

Cut scenes and combat are exquisitely rendered. But the game doesn’t seem to know what to do with its flashy visuals, slathering them on top of gameplay that can’t decide if it’s real-time action or mindless massacre. The schizo camera is part of the problem, but so is the fact that the game encourages players to attack buttons with abandon, introducing ridiculous combo on top of ridiculous combo like some nightmarish 3-D parody of a two-player fighter.

Enemy types are varied but uninventive: shambling zombies, militaristic zombies, mini-boss zombies, evil clown zombies and mutant boss zombies (and oh yeah: robots). The flow of gameplay, in which you clear an area to move onto another area that needs clearing (with the occasional hidden item or platforming in between), becomes instantly predictable. The sheer energy and comic-book-gore gets you through the first hour or two, but after that there isn’t much in the way of combat or gameplay variation.

This would have worked as a classic arcade game, in which time-passing and quarter-pumping is the point. But engagement and excitement only come in the form of the graphics and the potty-mouthed, Borderlands-style humor.

A helicopter is shooting bullets and missiles at you? Block and counter. A jet is dropping bombs overhead? Dash away. All these things are happening while underlings and mini-bosses swarm? Hit pretty much every button until they’re gone. Or you’re dead.

Or whatever. I hadn’t even gotten halfway through the game when this repetitive farce lost its appeal. My apathy was just another sad reminder of a wildly imbalanced game whose visuals deserved far better than they got.

A&E reporter John Wenzel has covered a variety of topics for The Denver Post over the years, including video games, comedy, music and the fine arts. He's been playing and loving video games since his dad brought home a sweet ColecoVision in 1983. Catch him on PSN as beardsandgum.

Hugh got his start writing for the Cheyenne and Woodmen Edition newspapers in Colorado Springs. In 2011 he moved to Denver where he has written for Denver Urban Spectrum and Colorado Community Media’s Wheat Ridge Transcript. Hugh joined The Denver Post in 2014 as an editorial assistant.